


Unfurl

by Empatheia



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angel True Forms, M/M, Timeline What Timeline, Transformation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-11
Updated: 2017-09-11
Packaged: 2018-12-26 10:40:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,940
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12057288
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Empatheia/pseuds/Empatheia
Summary: Castiel decides to show Dean what he really looks like, under Jimmy Novak's skin.





	Unfurl

**Author's Note:**

> 750words entry from 2017/05/03. I'm sure ten dozen versions of this already exist, considering the ship in question, but it was what I felt like writing that night so here you go. More cake. Please don't canon-pick, I barely remember half this show and haven't seen the recent seasons.

Sometimes Castiel himself forgets that this is not his face.

Jimmy Novak no longer exists, so this face belongs to no one but him, but it isn't his. It's only a mask to protect the eyes of those who look upon him, a vessel to carry him within the mortal world. It's supposed to be nothing more than that.

He's been here too long, though. The Fall showed him that any angel who stays on Earth long enough catches humanity like a cold. It seeps into them through their vessels, colours them with mortal hues.

No angel has spent as much time among the living as Castiel has, and he knows how it has changed him. He doesn't regret it. He likes the additions, the expansion of his understanding.

That doesn't mean that he wants to forget. It doesn't mean he wants to overwrite what he was, leave his angelic nature behind and become only human. It's the combination of both that he loves, the immortal perspective and the mortal passion.

So one day, after, he takes Dean to heaven. A remote corner of it where no souls dwell awaiting rebirth, where there are only nascent shapes and ideas of plans God once had for Earth. Mountain ranges that pierced the delicate shell of air surrounding the planet. Fields of silver grain rolling over vague hills, vast and inchoate.

"Uh, cool digs," says Dean, out of his element but doing his best.

"The location is irrelevant," says Castiel, "except that it is safe. I will not harm anyone if I do it here, except perhaps yourself."

Dean frowns. "Harm? Uh, buddy, you mind telling me what this is all about?"

Castiel bites his lip. Even here, he still wears Jimmy Novak's face, with Jimmy Novak's lines and furrows and perfect recreations of Jimmy Novak's faint old acne scars. Incongruous. Small.

"I would like to show myself to you," Castiel says. "Myself as I am unfurled, unfettered."

"So, your angel body," Dean confirms, eyes wide and nervous. "I've seen a lot of burned-out eyes in my day, Cas. Are you sure about this?"

He nods. "I will go slowly, and if you show signs of suffering I will revert and heal you immediately."

Dean makes his  _ All right, then, let's do it _ face and hooks his thumbs into the belt loops of his jeans, back defiantly straight. "Can I ask why you wanna do this now?"

Castiel isn't really sure how to answer that. The answer is so complex, involving so much history and so much feeling. What it boils down to, though, is that he wants to meet Dean without the mask on. He wants Dean to know him for himself. So he says that.

There's an odd sound that Castiel identifies after a moment as a shuddery indrawn breath on Dean's part, the kind he takes when he's fighting emotion he doesn't want to show. Tears, most often. Of every sort.

"Yeah, okay," he says thickly after a moment. "I get that. Go for it."

Castiel draws a deep breath of his own, and then carefully begins to peel away Jimmy Novak. Most angels, when returning to their true forms, simply obliterated their used-up vessels, but Castiel intended to put this one back on again when he was done, so he folded it up with care and set it aside before beginning the expansion.

He saw Dean shield his eyes against the light until they adjusted, but he did not seem to be in pain yet, so Castiel continued.

Slowly, cautiously, he unfurled. There was no better word in English to describe it: it was as if most of him had been tucked away into dimensions that did not infringe on the ones mortals used, and he was pulling it all back out and shaking it until it remembered its shape. Dean seemed to get smaller and smaller, a dark denim speck against the idle rippling of the silver fields.

Still no burning, though he could tell that Dean was trembling and struggling to cope with what his limited mortal senses were telling him. He had seen so many strange and awesome things in his life that he was better equipped to deal with this than most, but it was still a lot to ask.

With a deep sense of relief, Castiel completed his unfurling and stood before Dean in all his towering, alien magnificence, breathing free for the first time in years. It was so good to be out of the cramped little capsule he had been living inside of all this time, grateful as he was for it and all it had allowed him to do. It was still a binding, and to be unbound was a great pleasure.

"You, uhh, weren't kidding about the skyscraper thing," Dean said shakily, the whisper of an ant from Castiel's titanic feet. "And the Bible wasn't kidding about the rest."

"Be not afraid," said Castiel, his voice a warm white wind curling around and permeating through Dean's tiny form.

Dean huffed a strained laugh. "So that's why they always opened with that," he muttered. "How considerate of them."

Castiel did not precisely have knees in this form, being more of a towering presence with wheels of flame and many wings and far, far too many eyes for any mortal thing to be comfortable with, but after a moment's thought he found a way to settle himself closer to the ground without compressing himself again.

"Are you all right, Dean?" he asked.

Shrugging, Dean spread his hands. "I feel like I'm gonna bust from the inside out, and I have a headache, but I don't think I'm gonna die right this second. The longer I look the less sense you make, though, so I probably shouldn't look for too long. Right?"

"That would not be advisable," Castiel agreed. "I will revert soon. I simply wanted you to know... who I am.  _ What _ I am. I know I have told you many times, but there is a wide gulf between hearing and understanding."

"Yeah," Dean said softly. "You're not wrong. I pictured you, the way you described, but my imagination is obviously pretty limited. It didn't do you any kind of justice. You're kind of... uh. Listen, okay? I've seen a lot of really gnarly shit in my life, unimaginably ugly shit. It's nice to see something unimaginably... well, beautiful. That's not a word I use unironically often, or  _ get _ to use, so you'd better appreciate it."

Castiel smiled. He had no mouth, so it wasn't really recognizable as a smile in any visual way. He smiled with his being, became a warmer shade of light. "Thank you, Dean," he said, actually rather gratified. "For what it's worth, I feel much the same about you."

Dean looked down over his plain mortal form, denim and flannel and scars and stubble. "Dude," he said, "get real."

"Let me show you something," Castiel murmured. "May I?"

Shrugging, Dean assented, and Castiel reached out with a tendril of himself to suffuse Dean. Very cautiously, he gave Dean a fraction of his ability to  _ see _ . Then he drew Dean's consciousness up into himself and turned it around to look back at itself so that he would see what Castiel saw.

In this state, he was unable to speak, but Castiel could feel his thoughts just as clearly. He was sputtering his disbelief on the surface level, but beneath that he was weeping.

"There," whispered Castiel. "Now do you understand?"

Dean did. He wrestled frantically with it, unable to accept it, but he did.

Castiel saw the tiny ant-like body that was his vessel, of course, but he also saw what that vessel contained: a soul to which he had never found an equal, fierce and brave and scarred and sad and so, so beautiful.

"I wished you to see me this way so that you would understand what it is that loves you," Castiel told him, "and so that you would understand why you are loved. Do you understand, Dean?"

His friend was beyond answering, curled up within his wings and weeping his wounded heart out. Castiel held him until he was finished. Time was difficult for him here, so he didn't know how long it had been. Minutes? Hours? Years? It didn't matter.

Dean's tears purged him of much of the grime and sludge he had carried around with him all the years. Some guilts would remain, and they should; Dean was good, but he was not innocent, and it would not be right to set down those burdens when those he had hurt could not set down theirs. Much of the unnecessary misery was gone, though. He was cleansed. Renewed, though not reborn.

"Thanks, Cas," he said as he withdrew back to his vessel. "I guess I needed that."

"Yes, I believe you did," Castiel agreed. "Stand back. I will revert now."

Donning his vessel again took a little longer than doffing it had. All that volume of grace to stuff into so small a space, without pinching anything sensitive. It was a challenge, but he managed it eventually, and settled back into Jimmy Novak like donning a pair of too-small shoes that his feet had grown accustomed to.

When he was finished, he blinked his eyes open and looked at Dean, who was looking at him with an expression of tremendous complexity.

"What you said," Dean began, then faltered. "I, uh... Dammit."

Castiel smiled. "It's all right, Dean. You don't need to feel obligated to respond. It was a statement, not a question."

Dean rolled his eyes, but the tension in his shoulders belied his true state of unease. "I know that, Cas, but that's not the kind of thing you just say 'okay, cool' to. Besides, I... uh, have something I need to say too, so just let me get through it, okay?"

Wordlessly, Castiel nodded and waited.

It took Dean a moment to gather himself. When he began again, there was a defensive earnestness to his posture. "I got a lot of baggage," he said. "You know that. You've gotten the brunt of it more often than I like to think about. Part of that is that I have a lot of trouble admitting when I care about stuff. About people, especially. I freeze up and chicken out and it's always too late by the time I regret it."

"Yes," said Castiel, accepting.

"So," Dean continued, "I don't know if that was easy for you or not, but thanks either way. And Cas, I... uh."

Castiel waited. Dean had asked for his patience, and he had so much of that left to give. All the patience in the world, for the mortal soul that had won an angel's heart.

"Aw, fuckit," Dean said, looking skyward and at the ground and finally at Cas. "I love you too, man, okay? You gotta know that by now."

He had, but it still did wondrous things to him to hear it out loud. "I know," he said serenely.

Dean stared at him. "Did you just--" He sputtered, turned a little red, and collected himself. "Did you just Han Solo me? You feathery dickhead, I will kick your ass."

Castiel snorted. "You'll try."

Just like that, the moment passed, but Castiel would not forget. He never forgot anything. He would remember the shy but belligerent tone of Dean's voice, and the heat of the feeling behind it when those words were said. He would remember all of this, and it would sustain him through the centuries.

The door opened, and they went home together.

**X**


End file.
